To Scott, Cole says, “Contact the ranch right now and make sure they’ve secured Noah Turlington. I want human eyes on him at all times until further notice. His TruGlass has been compromised.”
Scott pulls out his cell phone and starts dialing.
In Cole’s ear, Julia says, “We’re Fort Knox around here, Cole! My only exposure here are the feeds I run to your team.”
“I’m handling this, Julia.”
“You better because if I—”
He hangs up on her. “I want Noah in a closet with at least three guns in his face until we figure out what the hell’s going on. And if he hasn’t already figured out his blood trackers are weaponized, let him know. In no uncertain terms.”
When the exit for 198 East appears, Charley turns hard to the right.
In another few seconds, she’s speeding west, up a dark road that travels through rolling hills dotted with the occasional oak tree. It’s beautiful, open country—by day. At night, it’s dark and desolate. If she keeps going, she’ll have to wind her way through the deep folds of the scrubby mountains that lie between here and the Great Central Valley, and she’ll probably lose cell service while she’s doing it.
“What am I looking for?” she asks.
“After three miles, there’s a distance to Coalinga sign. About a minute later, if you’re going around fifty miles per hour, you’ll come to a drainage ditch that runs under the road. It’s a short little pass, not a major bridge or anything. As soon as you cross it, pull to the shoulder and park.”
A few minutes later it all appears exactly as he said it would.
When she kills the engine, the sudden silence feels like a weight that pushes in on all sides of her. In another second, the headlights wink out. Her eyes begin adjusting to the darkness. The parcels on either side of the twisting two-lane blacktop are massive; their fences enclose grassy hills and the occasional lone farmhouse and barn.
“Parked,” she says.
“Do you have a flashlight?”
“I do. Is there anything else I’m going to need? Or will that be a surprise, too?”
“A flashlight and some short-term memory will do fine.”
She pops the trunk. A pickup blows past her so fast, she realizes the driver probably didn’t even see her parked on the shoulder. From the earthquake emergency kit Luke put together for her, she pulls out a halogen-bulbed flashlight. It’s slender as an ink pen, but it shines something fierce.
“Ready,” she says.
“Walk back to the drainage ditch and then into the drain pipe where it runs under the road.”
“Into it?”
“Yes. It’s winter, so you won’t need to worry about snakes.”
“I’m not afraid of snakes. I’m afraid of you.”
“Still?”
The ditch isn’t terribly deep, certainly not as deep as the arroyo where she used to do target practice behind her place in Arizona. She descends the grassy bank by occasionally reaching out and gripping the side of it that’s level with her shoulder. With her other hand, she angles the flashlight so that it floods the bottom of the ditch with light. Maybe her former psychiatrist got the details confused, or maybe he’s forgotten. What passes under the road isn’t a ditch, really; it’s a culvert. And at this hour, it looks like the great yawning mouth of a subterranean beast.
Fear dances up her spine, sends chills along the tops of her shoulders.
Being alone in the dark like this is not something she’s done since she experienced Zypraxon’s power, and the return of what feels like an old, childish fear first annoys, then paralyzes her.
“Charley?”
“I’m going. I’m going.”
When she steps up and into the culvert’s mouth, she knocks the flashlight against the rim by accident. A wavery metallic gong echoes through the culvert’s run.
“Reach up to about the height of your shoulder and run your hand along the metal until you feel a handle.”
She obeys, but the choice of where to angle the flashlight bothers her. She decides to run her hand along the metal in darkness and angle the flashlight’s beam at the opposite end of the tunnel, in case some night predator decides to peer inside and see what all the fuss is about. But the darkness beyond the opening is so total, the flashlight makes the opposite end of the culvert look like a portal into a realm of infinite nightmares. So she turns the beam to the curved metal wall next to her.
Then she feels it.
“Pull,” he says.
She does. “It’s not doing anything.”
“Pull harder. It’s been months.”
Months, she thinks. So whatever it is, he could have put this in place himself.
She’ll have to either put the flashlight down or stick it in between her teeth. She goes with the latter. It works. With both hands, she begins yanking on the metal handle. It whines and bucks, fighting her for every tug. If she tries any harder, she might end up swallowing the flashlight and choking on it. Instead, she curses as she bites down on it, which only causes Noah Turlington to say her name again and again.
Then, suddenly, she’s flat on her ass in the thin stream of water trickling through the culvert’s bottom. Whatever fell to the culvert’s floor made an impact that sends vibrations rattling through its length. They tickle her thighs and butt, so startling she almost misses the second loud gong that follows the first—the sound of something big and heavy falling free of the new opening overhead.
It’s a lockbox, and it landed on one side in between her splayed legs.
“Charley!”
The flashlight stayed between her teeth, probably because she bit down harder on it during the shock of the metal door coming free. She pulls it from her mouth. “I’m OK.”
“Do you see it?”
“Yes. What’s the combination?”
“Seven, five, eight, one.”
The lockbox is too heavy and big for her to hold in one hand. She rocks up onto her knees, even though it means keeping them in the water, and enters the combination.
The lock clicks open, and she pulls the lid up, and she’s shining the flashlight down on a plastic bag of what must be a dozen orange pills just like the one Dylan Thorpe gave her in his office at the Saguaro Wellness Center five months before.
“That should help with your security issue,” he says.
37
“How long have these been here?” Charley asks.
“That’s all?” he asks. “Not even a thank-you?”
“How long?”
“Like I said back then, I figured if we got separated after Arizona, you’d either run to your lawyer in San Francisco or back to Altamira. It’s not quite halfway, but given you picked Altamira, I’d say I chose a good spot.”
“These have been here that long? You planted them before you sent Jason to my house?”
“Yes, as a backup.”
“A backup,” she whispers.
She’s surprised by how much this lockbox frightens her.
Yes, she was angry when Cole refused her request for pills today. But when they had first started working together and he demanded she give up the rest of her stash, she had felt relief. Immense relief. A freedom from the responsibility they presented. The responsibility of keeping them secret and deciding how, if ever, they should be put to use. Now she’s responsible not just for the three she requested, but for nine more Cole doesn’t know about.
“I’m so disappointed,” the voice in her ear says.
“This is incredibly dangerous, leaving these here like this.”
“For whoever gets in your way, maybe.”
“This isn’t about me. Someone could have found these.”
“Oh, you’re right! The local chapter of the Isolated Ditch Exploration Society just had a huge membership drive. What was I thinking? Honestly, Charlotte! Can you not manage to thank me for anything?”
“Now I’m supposed to find a place to hide these?”
“My hiding place is perf
ect, thank you. Just take what you need and leave the rest for later.” Her hands are shaking as she runs her fingers over the plastic bag. It’s like the pills inside are giving off invisible vibrations. She feels less like an employee—a test subject, a host!—who placed herself, perhaps foolishly, but entirely, in Graydon’s care, and more like that frightened woman who had to flee Arizona months before, without a plan, without a map.
“I’m assuming Cole doesn’t give you an unlimited supply to do with as you please.” He takes her silence as an affirmative response. “OK. Well, there you go. You don’t have to use them, of course, but now you have the choice. And someday soon, once you get past your anger, you’ll see that’s what I’m all about.”
“Secrets and hiding places?”
“Choices.”
Her phone vibrates in her pocket; she pulls it out, sees a text from Bailey. Busted. Wrap it up. They’re onto him.
“Shit,” Noah whispers in her ear. “Later, Charley.”
What she hears next sounds like a flurry of movement, followed by a door being thrown open so hard it bangs into the wall behind it. Noah Turlington shouts a word or two of what sounds like an overly cheerful greeting to whoever’s just burst into his room, then the connection goes dead.
Told u we didn’t have much time, Bailey texts. Prolly mins til they figure you’re systems offline too. U should head back.
She wants to text him back, but she can’t remove her hand from the bag of pills. Choices, she thinks.
“Choices,” she whispers.
Charley?
Three is what she asked for, so three is what she’ll take.
After the drama of the hiding place and the lockbox, the Ziploc bag inside seems surprisingly pedestrian. The pills within look just like the last ones he gave her. Lumpy and cakey, like they came from a meth lab and not an industrial one. That means they’ll break easily. She empties nine of them into the lockbox’s padded interior, then twists the top of the Ziploc bag into a loose knot above the remaining three so they’ll be protected.
Give me a sec, she texts back.
In another few minutes, she has the lockbox closed and back inside its hiding place.
Once she’s up the grassy bank and back on the shoulder of the road, she texts, Did you know this is what he was going to do?
Yes, comes the response.
Are you next?
?
They just busted in on him. Are they coming for you next?
They can’t.
Why not?
That’s not how it works.
She’s not about to keep typing in furious responses to his evasiveness in the darkness on the side of the road.
We need to talk. Now.
We r talking. This is how I talk.
Call me. Now.
Ugh.
Now Bailey.
As she settles into the driver’s seat, the phone rings. It’s an unknown caller, of course. She places the Ziploc bag in the empty cup holder.
“This isn’t really necessary,” Bailey says when she answers.
She can count on one hand the number of times she’d heard the guy speak out loud when she was a teenager and Bailey was barely high school age. He was a lot younger than her, for one, but he was also a quiet introvert, rarely seen around town; the polar opposite of his athletic, loudmouth older brother. Still, she’s surprised by the softness of his voice. It lacks the spark of his text messages.
She starts the car, pulls a U-turn, and heads back in the direction of the 101.
“Did you know this is what he was going to do?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“OK. Then you need to also know he can’t always be trusted.”
“You think the pills are fake?” Bailey asks.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says. “You just don’t know the whole story with him.”
“I’m learning. I did a bunch of reading while you guys were chatting.”
“Where are you?”
“If I try to explain the Graydon network to you, you’ll just get—”
“No, I mean physically, Bailey. Where in the world are you?”
“I don’t want you to know.”
“And you don’t want Luke to know, either, is that it? I’m not keeping this call a secret from him, so please. Give me something I can tell him that will make him hurt a little less.”
“I’m safe. He doesn’t have to worry about me. He’s never had to worry about me. I don’t know why he does anyway.”
“Because you’re all he has.”
“Not anymore. He’s got you. And he shouldn’t waste his time with you worrying about me. That’s dumb.”
She shouldn’t be surprised Bailey speaks with the sullen certainty of a seven-year-old who’s never had a responsibility. But she is.
“Just give me something I can share with him that will make him feel like you’re OK.”
After a long silence, Bailey finally says, “Tell him Cole doesn’t even know where I am.”
“What? How are you working for him, then? Have you guys even met?”
“IRL? No. I don’t do anything IRL.”
“What about all this raw computing power he supposedly gave you?”
“Ever heard of UPS?”
“I thought he agreed to clear your record.”
“So he says. Do you believe everything Cole says? You shouldn’t. ’Cause if he told you you had good security, he’s lying. You’ve got surveillance, but that’s it. And right now, he doesn’t even have that because I threw it all off-line.”
“That thing . . . Noah said. About being injected with something that can kill him?”
“Yeah, they’ve got some kind of tracking system on him. In him, it looks like.”
“They injected me with all sorts of things during lab testing. Do I have one, too?”
“Yes.”
“And it could kill me at a second’s notice?”
“I can’t tell that from here,” he says, as if he’s trying to spot a storm front, not discussing whether there’s a device inside her that could end her life in an instant.
“What can you tell?”
“With you, it’s not just a tracker. It’s giving them biometric data. Like blood oxygen levels, cell counts. It’s more like a medical monitoring system, and it’s putting out twice the information his is. With him, they’re just trying to tell where he is and if he’s alive.”
“OK, so is it tracking me right now?” she asks. “Or did you knock it off-line, too?”
“I didn’t knock it off-line ’cause I figured that would trigger some kind of alert. Like they’d think you died or something.”
“All right. So they can track me right now?”
“Not really. I played with it a little.”
“What does that mean, Bailey?”
“It means, you’re not really where you are.”
“Where am I?” she asks.
“Graceland?” Cole screams. “How the fuck did she get to Memphis?”
“Also, isn’t Graceland closed right now?” Fred asks.
“That’s not the point, Fred,” Scott barks.
The condition of Fred’s house already has Cole on the brink of rage. There’s a relatively secure fence, but most of the place is devoted to Fred’s living quarters. The room allocated to Charlotte and Luke’s surveillance is one tiny closet that can barely fit a chair. Inside, several flat-screen computer monitors broadcast feeds from the house’s kitchen and living room. There’s no live audio on either feed, and a separate computer’s set up to receive an alert if a certain buzzword’s spoken inside the house or on their cell phones, an alert that then allows Fred to access the archive of recorded conversations. There aren’t even any exterior views on the driveway or backyard. And even though there’s a rest area in the back of Fred’s house for the microdrone crew, their feed, when they’re dispatched, goes directly to their van.
He’s going to destroy Ed Baker. He’s going to destroy him
, then drag his destroyed pieces through the streets whereupon he will urinate on them in front of his entire security team.
But for now he has to focus on Scott’s words, even though the effort’s a struggle. “There’s no way she got to Tennessee since we saw her this afternoon. The closest airports are both three hours away, and then on top of that’s the flight, which is, what, four hours?”
“And they’ve never played Elvis in that house once,” Fred says.
“Shut up, Fred,” Scott says.
“I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Someone’s playing with her blood trackers,” Cole says. “And they’re doing it so we’ll have a long, stupid, useless conversation about how to get from Altamira to Tennefuckingsee.”
Someone being my independent contractor.
He refuses to beat himself up over this.
He’d had no choice but to hire Bailey, and given the amazing job Bailey did finding Richard Davies, Cole isn’t ready to regret the decision yet. He never thought handling the kid would be easy, or entirely possible; he’s too brilliant and too unattached. But the way Cole saw it, he didn’t have a choice. No way in hell he could let a hacker with Bailey’s incredible skills just hang out on the edges of Project Bluebird 2.0, servicing Charley and Luke’s needs whenever he felt like it. Still, the terms of his deal were hardly favorable to Cole, and now he fears the reality of that is going to sink its teeth into his backside and take a nice, big bite.
“Playing with her blood trackers,” Fred says, as if each word is so heavy it pulls on his bottom lip. “That can’t be good. For her, I mean.”
“They’re not weaponized,” Cole says.
“Still, they’re in her blood, right? I don’t want anybody playing with something in my blood.”
“What’s the ground team relayed about her house since there are no fucking cameras on the exterior?”
“The lights are all on, but her car’s gone. When they noticed, they called in.”
“How did they not see her pull out?” Cole asks.
Fred says, “Because the car tracker’s also off-line, and the ground team was using that and the blood trackers so they could stay out of sight up the street.”
Blood Echo Page 23